Part 1
Welcome to Gargoyle's Quest: Ghosts N Goblins! First up, watch this:
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And now as we saw at the end of the video, we're now in the overworld of the game. This portion of the game likes to pretend it's an RPG. You can explore the world but there's very little in the way of open-endedness. You basically go from one railroaded segment to the next. (there is some reward for exploring we'll see, but we'll get to those bridges when we cross them). Here's the area we're presently able to explore:
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We exit down in the lower right, which is the level the game starts at. Right now our destination is that town in the left. But as you can see, there are three of the "ghost" enemies blocking our path, two one route, one the other.
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Each of the ghosts provide this same encounter, which rewards you with one vial. On top of that, the overworld provides penty of random encounters. The five ghost fight in the "W" shaped area is the most basic fight available, but there are many enemy types, and "arena" shapes. For example, while making my way to the town I encountered this:
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Fighting venus fly traps that spit out floating eyes that explode on contact (the explosions DO have splash damage, so be careful) and then these guys too:
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Which are just ghosts with shields protecting their front ends. Neither encounter is very difficult, but sometimes the RNG decides to hit you with far harder encounters. The harder a fight is, the more vials you earn for winning.
But anyways, into the first town!
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This will become important in a few updates.
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As highlighted in the intro to the game, the Black Light is the secret weapon of The Destroyers they used to decimate the Ghoul Realm.
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Gargoyles in towns make absolutely dreadful high pitched noises when talking. Jark is the leader of this particular town, and his second sight should guide us to where to go next.
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Ooo, gimme gimme! There's 2 vials just sitting on the ground here. Yoink!
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I'm sure that won't effect our quest at all.
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The in-game explanation for having multiple lives and continues. Let's go inside now.
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This room is inside each town, and serves as a save point, both for your passwords, and for if you use up all your lives in the action mode, as you will restart at the point where you got the password.
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Of course!
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This guy sells you lives for your vials. The price goes up with each town you visit. They'll get crazy expensive by the end, so stock up now.
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Jark uh, looks pretty big up there. I'm sure he won't mind us grabbing his loot just lying on the floor though. It's just a single vial though.
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Oh no you don't. We already have to save the whole realm from Breager and the destroyers, you're not conning us here into doing your job for you. We'll say no to that offer.
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Well, I suppose if you're going to bribe me with a "but thou must!" result...
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And there we have it, we've agreed to go on our first subquest, and we've been given a fingernail for our efforts. There's four different powerup types we get throughout the game: Fingernails and claws increase our jumping abilities for some reason making us able to fly higher. Wing upgrades increase our hover gauge, armor increases our health points, and then theres different magic breaths which we'll get to as we get them.
Regardless, we now have our first fetch quest, which we'll get to in the next update!